Based on these grounds, my professor wants to give me a -100% on the assignment, which would bring down my overall grade by 15% total, probably causing me to not make the C-wall (depending on how well I do on the final exam). For this reason (and my conscious), I decided to appeal.

However, I believe that most of the similarity in the report comes from my copying of lines 142-152:

However, this snippet is my own. I wrote these lines without referencing HashMap.java, and this is a common algorithm for chaining that I can explain thoroughly, and have known about for years.

Yes, I know the fact I copied the other two lines compromises my integrity and made the 20% into 40% to begin with, so how can I prove this?

I’m not sure how to defend this whole case before a Student Conduct Board who knows very little about programming. My board hearing is in a month. Does these two snippets of code constitute plagiarism of my entire project? Is -15% to my overall grade fair?

Sidenotes:

Our projects are pretty extensive since we aren’t allowed to use java.util.* (like 1k+ lines for each project in 8 days), and I did not copy any other code. I’d say the actual data structure implementation is only meant to take about 1/5 our time spent per project.

Over 30% of the class has been reported for academic integrity violations on projects over the semester, and the newly graduated professor doesn’t seem to think himself or his assignments are the problem. I should have caught onto the warning before this last project of the semester…